There is a reckoning...a Crysis...

Why am I blogging at past 3am? Woke up to muscular pain due to playing a Wii. I've rubbed some of this oil thingymabob and now instead of pain there is a stinging warmness that takes the pain away.

First of all, to the reason of muscular pain. There was a Wii Party at Dorothy's place, a uni friend of mine. Everyone bought a dish for the dinner while a light lunch and nibbles were provided. I came on time, but one of my friends was late from the airport and that held up the rest of the group who were waiting at Lidcombe station to drive them there. So it was near 1pm when everyone actually arrived. But it was a lot of fun and forced me to examine my views on the Wii.

I've always viewed the Wii as innovative but something of a lightweight. The style of play on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 has always appealed to me more then the motion controls of the Wii, and certainly for some games the use of motion controls are questionable as to whether it was really effective. However, the Wii is actually quite revolutionary. The motion controls are dead simple to use and the party games are definitely much fun at the very least. And while the Wii is still a lightweight in terms of graphics and power, I'm sure Nintendo has a Wii 2 in planning that will offer better graphics and performance.

Onto some gaming now, since that's what I've been doing these past few weeks in the holidays. I have played Crysis and Call of Duty 4. Crysis lives up to the hype. It's a graphically beautiful game, and the freedom given to you to achieve objectives is wonderful. However, the game does lean towards the run-and-gun style of gaming. I've played it three times, one of times I tried not to kill anyone at all but its quite difficult. Your cloaking powers don't last that long while running and taking a long route is...well...long. Sometimes you have to kill enemy soldiers so that they don't alert their comrades. Still a very good game.

Call of Duty 4, however, is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It plays more or less exactly like Call of Duty 2 but with better graphics and new weapons. It's nothing revolutionary, more evolutionary. Still, like Call of Duty 2, it paced well and is a great ride. The plot is decent and I liked how it drew you into it. Multiplayer is blast, according to my brother. It's easy to kill and even easier to be killed. The more people you kill, the more you level up which gives you greater access to better weapons and better powers. I'll be trying that out tomorrow.

I still have Stranglehold and Kane and Lynch to play, although Kane and Lynch wasn't rated that highly by Gamespot. Also I'm reading several books which I'll do a quick review later.

Maybe now I'll get some sleep.

Long Odds

Woah, haven't updated in a while. Got capped along the way but that's been fixed now so I'm back on the net again. So updates.

Paintball was mad fun last Wednesday. It was quite hot but a beautiful day for some paintball action. Drove to Rouse Hill for Action Paintball. I came prepared to spend lots of money, but actually didn't spend that much at all. I went for a $40 gun upgrade and boy that was worth it. The standard paintball gun (technically called a marker) shoots around 3-4 shots per second with an effective range of less than 20m. My marker had a very sensitive electronic trigger, did 15 or so shots per second and had an effective range of 50m. Needless to say, the ability to pump out lots of shots relatively accurately made me the bane of all the players involved. In one game, each team had a general who could only be killed by a headshot. I quickly targeted him from a safe distance and let off a volley of shots. By the time he yelled out "Hit!" and had his hands up in the air I had hit him 4 times on the top of the head. Fun times.

My brother's new comp finally arrived. AMD Athlon X2 6000+ with 2gigs of RAM and a 8800GT. Pretty decent specs. I'm dual-booting Vista and XP since my brother doesn't feel comfortable with Vista yet. Still it has plenty of grunt and I'm looking forward to Call of Duty 4 and Crysis.

I was capped a few days ago, but I have temporarily upgraded to the 20 gig plan, so now I have 8 gigs on-peak and 20 gigs off peak to use. More expensive at $94.95, up from the $64.95 we pay for 12GB/24GB plan. However, it didn't go through as expected initially as I was capped, and the online form to change plans didn't go through because I was capped. Had to call up Optus and get tech support to change it. It actually wasn't that bad, only took 10 mins of waiting. Last time, my dad called to change billing details and it took over 30 mins before he could take to a human operator. Thank god I wasn't on hold for so long.

So now I have more bandwidth to use until the end of the month. I won't have that slow-ass feeling of being capped from 2 weeks.

In Mass Transit

So the new computer order is in, and all I have to do is wait a week or so until its ready. Until then, I don't really have much to do, except some Neverwinter Nights and CounterStrike Source.

Actually it's mainly CS. There are a few mods out there that spice things up, instead of the old 24/7 dust/office servers. My favourite at the moment is called Gun Game and the Deathmatch mods. Gun Game basically has you start with pistols and slowly level up to better weapons as you get kills. You have to get kills with the designated weapon though. Add the deathmatch mod which respawns you back in a few seconds, makes a very fast-paced game. The two last levels are pretty hard, grenade and knife. There are a few favourite servers but all of them have friendly fire on, you sometimes it's tough to identify you targets and engaging them quickly. I'm temp banned from one server for too many team kills. But it's really fast and its easy to accidentally start shooting your team mate.

Well that's really all. Just spending my time on CS until paintball comes around on Wednesday.

My eyes are bleeding...interesting

Exam period, where I cram everything I need to know into the few hours or so before the actual exam, as opposed to actually taking the time to study. I'll pass. No HDs or even Ds but I'll make it.

Brother is getting a new computer, and I'm a bit jealous but its his turn. Being the second child he seems to get all the hand-me-downs over these past few years. So this will probably cheer him up. The bad thing about buying a new computer is that there is never a good time to buy one. Intel's Penryn and AMD's Phenom are lurking in the wings, so anything I buy now is going to be obsolete soon. DDR3 is on the horizon as well. At least the nVidia 8800GT is looking good. Personally I would wait a few months, but since my brother wants one now...I'll just make the most of it then. Forgive the techno-speak for those not on the computer hardware scene.

Next exam is radiographic practice, which tests which projections I use to x-ray the anatomy and related pathology. The exam will probably rape me bad. As long as I don't fail though. Crap thing is that I have a clinical briefing at 11am, to update our radiation monitors and tell us where we're going. Except the exam starts at 9am and ends at 11:10am. I'm not sure who that's going to happen. The dude in charge of clinical should check out exam schedules again.

Paintball next Wednesday because it's been a while since I last had some paintball action. Plus I get to drive there, so a little more freedom. Still I have to find my way there. I might get my dad to accompany me on a scouting mission on the weekends. So I know where to go and don't get lost.

Job thingo went well enough. I think I'm in and all I have to do is wait for the email stating my starting times (after the exams of course). Altogether $150 for 10 hours work over the weekend. Not that bad. On Sunday, I was working with this Chinese uni dude who was studying accounting. He kept bending over to lift the heavy boxes, when he should have kept his back straight. Next time you have to lift heavy objects, either alone or with a mate, dammit, keep your back straight and use your leg power. Not worth it having a crick in your back.